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You can't have public health without a public health system. We just don't want to be part of a mindless competition for resources. We want to build back capacity in the system.

Paul Farmer

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Paul Farmer
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: October 26
Anthropologist
Human Rights Activist
Medical Anthropologist
Physician
North Adams
Massachusetts
Part
Mindless
Back
Competition
Without
Build
Resources
Capacity
Health
System
Public

More quotes by Paul Farmer

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Civil and political rights are critical, but not often the real problem for the destitute sick. My patients in Haiti can now vote but they can't get medical care or clean water.
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The essence of global health equity is the idea that something so precious as health might be viewed as a right.
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I'm one of six kids, and the eight of us lived for over a decade in either a bus or a boat.
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The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.
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You can't have public health without working with the public sector. You can't have public education without working with the public sector in education.
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Everybody should be interested in access to primary and secondary education for everybody.
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I've been asked a lot for my view on American health care. Well, 'it would be a good idea,' to quote Gandhi.
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I would say that, intellectually, Catholicism had no more impact on me than did social theory.
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Equity is the only acceptable goal
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It is very expensive to give bad medical care to poor people in a rich country.
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Anywhere you have extreme poverty and no national health insurance, no promise of health care regardless of social standing, that's where you see the sharp limitations of market-based health care.
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People call me a saint and I think, I have to work harder. Because a saint would be a great thing to be.
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The idea that because you're born in Haiti you could die having a child. The idea that because you're born in you know Malawi your children may go to bed hungry. We want to take some of the chance out of that.
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What I can argue is that no one should have to die of a disease that is treatable.
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The biggest public health challenge is rebuilding health systems. In other words, if you look at cholera or maternal mortality or tuberculosis in Haiti, they're major problems in Haiti, but the biggest problem is rebuilding systems.
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At the same time, it is obvious that clinicians in Haiti are faced with different, and, in fact, greater, challenges when attempting to treat complications of HIV disease.
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Some people talk about Haiti as being the graveyard of development projects.
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For me, an area of moral clarity is: you're in front of someone who's suffering and you have the tools at your disposal to alleviate that suffering or even eradicate it, and you act.
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I think that looking forward it's easy to imagine more constructive help for Haiti.
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We have to design a health delivery system by actually talking to people and asking, 'What would make this service better for you?' As soon as you start asking, you get a flood of answers.
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